Digital Design Just as Most

Digital Design

Just as most drivers do not know what goes on under the hood of their car, most consumers are not aware of the way their digital toys are designed. Take apart your iPod, your HDTV, your laptop, or your wireless router and at their core is a complex system optimized for the product at hand. Both embedded and complex systems depend on effective digital design. An integral part of hardware/software systems interface, digital design is literally at the heart of consumer electronics. Therefore, it has become imperative to understand how digital design has impacted new product development and the evolution of product design. Digital design has an indirect yet palpable impact on consumer products and consumer markets. Because hardware and software engineers work within highly competitive market environments, their work is complicated by matters wholly unrelated to digital design. Firms need to release products before they would be optimally ready to gain market leverage; similarly, firms decry an overly regulated environment to feed the competitive environment. Because of these complications it may seem that digital design has devolved: that consumer products are too incompatible, too complex for consumers, too easily outdated, or simply poorly made. It is a grave mistake to believe that digital design has devolved. Consumer electronics have improved greatly over the years due to digital design innovation and it is time that the world's deft digital designers receive credit due.

Consumer electronics have made a gradual transition from analog to digital circuitry. The transformation has depended on a number of factors including the pace of research and development in the computing fields, the evolution of the microprocessor, and general market forces. The 1980s marked one of the greatest evolutionary leaps in our field because of the emergence of the PC and its immanent entrenchment into the American and later, world markets. As the PC evolved, so too did digital design: the manipulation of circuit boards, the coding of firmware, and the production of microcontrollers. Demands for ever-greater portability has also transformed the market for consumer goods. Laptop computers, PDAs, and tablet PCs are just a few examples of how the PC lifestyle has become increasingly more mobile.

We have also witnessed a revolution in communications technologies. The cellular phone is gradually replacing land line technologies in many parts of the world, especially Asia and Europe. Digital mobile technologies have evolved to meet consumer demands and have been bolstered by sound digital design. The ways engineers have integrated their knowledge of microprocessors with telecommunications sciences have enabled the development of advanced technologies, many of which have yet to hit the shelves.

The ordinary tube television is also going to be extinct soon. Engineers have integrated digital circuitry with analog feeds to create stunning new displays, and as countries work fast to upgrade their communications infrastructure, digital television broadcasting will soon be the norm. We owe our engineers a pat on the back for the part they have played in creating, designing, implementing, and perfecting these new technologies. Technologies that many people take for granted works because of good digital design. Digital cameras, wireless networking hubs, and digital voice recorders all work because of digital logic. Video game consoles and game boy technologies would be absolutely unthinkable without digital design wherewithal. Even cars come with digital circuitry. Next-generation smart technologies such as wired kitchen appliances, home electrical systems, security systems, and entertainment systems, are also becoming commonplace in many countries, testimony to the vast strides we have taken to improve consumer technology for the better.

Critics of digital design usually make two main claims about the way digital design has failed the modern consumer. The first camp claims that digital technologies have made life more complicated. Pointing to the frustration they feel when their computer crashes, or when their car breaks down, these people claim that digital design never quite works the way it should. Some of them may even have a point, but must at the same time bear in mind that our field is in its infancy. Keep in mind the extraordinary leaps we have made in a relatively short period of time. One need only bring to mind the supercomputers of the early 1970s to see that in 30 years we have been able to develop microprocessors small enough their parent products fit in a child's hand. The second camp of detractors claims that digital design is weakening product integrity because of the lack of standardization. Any consumer who cannot use their cellular phone in Europe or who has three different types of memory cards or who can't hook up their AppleTV with their new plasma monitor will know that improved standards would certainly make life easier.